How species diversity responds to different kinds of human-caused habitat destruction

摘要

Human-caused habitat destruction, the major cause of species diversity losses, can be classified into two basic types, instantaneous destruction and continuous destruction. Thus, a universal model should be established to simulate and forecast the effects of different kinds of habitat destruction on species diversity during different historical periods. In this paper, we explore a multi-time-scale n-species model to study and compare species responses to instantaneous and continuous destruction. We find that (1) under instantaneous destruction, there are two different mechanisms of species extinction: one is a time-delayed deterministic extinction of superior competitors in order from the best to the poorest; the other is the extinction in a short time of inferior competitors. The survivors will experience three phases: decline, adjustment, and equilibrium. (2) When the total amounts of habitat destruction for both instantaneous and continuous cases are equal, the oscillation amplitudes of species abundances under instantaneous destruction are much greater than under continuous destruction, especially for inferior competitors, which make inferior competitors under instantaneous destruction more prone to stochastic extinction. Therefore instantaneous destruction is more detrimental to the survival of inferior competitors. (3) Under continuous destruction with habitat eventually being destroyed completely, there also are two types of species extinction mechanisms: the first is extinction in order from the best competitors to the poorest before complete destruction; the second is collective extinction due to complete destruction.